Tango lyrics, orchestras, singers, recording dates, tagging
Every once in a while I get asked by tango dancers and students about the lyrics of the songs we are dancing to – what they are about, and if there are any translations or at least the full Spanish originals are available on the web. Sometimes the questions are about the tangos I play when I DJ at a milonga – when a song was recorded, by which orchestra, who is the singer, etc. Over there years I collected many links that helped me a lot to learn more about tangos and I think it’s worth sharing them so those interested in the music can learn more about it and appreciate even more the beauty and poetry of many lyrics. (For me, it was a surprise when I found out that most of my favorite lyrics were written by Homero Manzi.) Here are a few resources for finding a variety of information online about tangos, performers, composers, recording dates and lyrics.
Q: I’d like to know more about the songs I already have in my tango library, and would like to find out who recorded a particular tango, or what recordings does a given orchestra have with a specific singer. Where can I find this kind of information?
A: Check out tango.info – it is an extensive database with a lot of details for thousands of tangos, valses and milongas. It also has a built-in tagger functionality that works together with a free tagging program called mp3tag, so you can easily label an entire CD’s worth of mp3s with just a few clicks.
Q: I want to learn more about tango, vals and milonga lyrics – if possible, in English.
A: There are quite a few resources available on the internet to help you. In most cases, if you know the title of the song, or even just a few words from the lyrics with the correct Spanish spelling, you can use Google to help you find the full lyrics (in Spanish, of course) at one of these three websites:
Lyics web sites – with lyrics in Spanish only:
http://www.hermanotango.com.ar/Letras/letra_a.htm
http://www.todotango.com/spanish/las_obras/alfabetico.aspx?letra=A&t=0
http://www.argentinaonline.info/tangos/ – not very user friendly, but has the largest lyrics collection of all three
There are also some tango lyrics web sites with English translations (song counts as of July 2011):
http://poesiadegotan.wordpress.com/ – a blog with about 70 lyrics of well known and popular tangos, milongas and valses
http://letrasdetango.wordpress.com/ – over 100 lyrics, many with mp3 files so you can listen as you read
http://tangodc.com/lyrics/index.htm – about 90 lyrics translated
Q: I speak some Spanish, but there are words in the tango lyrics that I don’t know (or cannot even find in a Spanish dictionary). Where can I look these up?
A: These words are most likely part of the Buenos Aires slang called lunfardo – a mixture Italian, Spanish and many other languages. Here are some lunfardo dictionaries to help you to translate a song yourself, or if you need to look up a specific word in the slang Buenos Aires:
http://www.todotango.com/spanish/biblioteca/DiccionarioLunfardo.aspx – this page has a lot of lunfardo expressions, but explanations are very short
http://www.clubdetango.com.ar/lunfardeando/Terminos.htm – a smaller collection of lunfardo terms, with more detailed explanations and some examples, including tango lyrics
http://www.elportaldeltango.com/dicciona.htm – one-word translations of lunfardo terms
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